April 23rd 2023
Chapter 113
We Become the Daily News
... reporting live from Sullivan Stables where, earlier this evening, two men entered the property and reportedly got away with two horses, both involved in the filming of the television series Heart of Texas and its recent follow-up, Goldenheart. We're hearing now that two employees of the Austin ranch attempted to stop the theft before being assaulted by the intruders. Ambulances were seen hurrying away as we arrived on the scene and the identities of the injured remain unknown, but it is believed that one of them may be ranch owner and head of the horses' medical team, Dr. Lucas Friar...
x
In his unconscious mind, he could remember a lot of it, but it came in pieces, disjointed and dizzying. There were words that seemed to echo over and over, like someone had put his thoughts on speaker. Over and over, he thought... I shouldn't be here... I shouldn't be here... And he shouldn't, or at least he hadn't been meant to, and when he'd wake, that idea would stay with him, the thought, and the implications of what might have happened if he hadn't come along when he'd done.
He'd been there... Why had he been there? He didn't remember, except that he'd been called in, so of course he'd gone in. He'd gone and... he'd done what he'd set out to do, he remembered that, and he remembered... being about to leave and seeing something that didn't belong. A large truck. That in itself was not uncommon, especially not this kind, the kind to transport horses, except that if an animal was going to be moved in or out, he would have known about it, and they had none of those that day.
He was walking, approaching the truck, and... there was a horse inside, looking distraught, and there was a man's voice in there, too. And then a scream, warbled, halfway muffled, and for never having heard anything of its kind before, he knew where it came from, who... Sylvie...
He was running toward the scream, he could see now... a man, and his clinic assistant. She was trying to push him away, and he was yelling at her, calling her names because she wouldn't respond to him. He didn't know she couldn't hear him, and he probably wouldn't have cared. But she was in his way, and he needed her to be out of it.
He remembered shouting at the man, telling him to leave Sylvie alone, and then... pain... pain in his back, sudden and burning, and then in the back of his head... and then nothing, then the start again, over, and over, and over... I shouldn't be here... I shouldn't be here...
x
It wasn't uncommon for Lucas to be called away before he could go over to the ranch, or on his days off, or after he'd come home at the end of the day. This call had been one of those. He'd been home, they all had been, they'd had dinner, bath time was done, bedtime for the girls, too. Marianne had still been up but was just on the verge of heading up, so he'd given her a quick hug and kiss good night before driving off. Maya had seen their firstborn off to bed not long after and settled in on the couch along with Wyatt, doing reading for class while holding a sleeping Finneas, and Nellie, texting with Bobby now that she'd finished the work she'd had to do. Maya was watching television, mostly just waiting for Lucas to get back. After a half hour, Gracie got home from work and the four of them sat on the couch, talking about their day.
The phone rang and the caller ID told her it was Mel's B&B.
"Did you forget to charge your ph..."
"Maya, are your girls around?" a woman's voice asked, and the tone was so strange that it took a moment for her to recognize who it was.
"Cristina?" she blinked. "What's..."
"Are your girls near you?" Cristina insisted, new urgency in her. Maya sat up. Wyatt, Nellie, and Gracie looked at her.
"No, they're upstairs, asleep, why?"
"Someone broke in, they got through security at the gate, we don't know how yet, but they were after horses, the ones from the shows. They got away with two of them. Sylvie was out there, checking in on them before going home, like she always does. They messed her up pretty bad, I barely saw her, but it was bad, I..." Hearing all this, Maya could do nothing but curse under her breath, drawing even more curiosity from her brother and sisters.
"Is Lucas with her?" she asked, ignoring them. Even to her, as she would remember later, her voice sounded purposefully oblivious, like she knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, that the biggest hit had not yet come, but hoped that if she somehow braced herself, it wouldn't touch her.
"He was, he tried to stop them, and I don't even want to think about how things could have ended for Sylvie if he hadn't been there. Rafa saw the truck leaving, and he knew it didn't belong. He ran out there before I could stop him. He's the one who found them both, unconscious but breathing. There's no point for you to come out here, just get to the hospital as soon as you can..."
She didn't know how she kept it together. Somewhere inside her, she was sure, some part of her was screaming and terrified, but that wasn't the part that took charge. Instead, she became driven with a single purpose. She had to get to her husband. She hung up the phone and stood from the couch.
"Maya?" Wyatt asked.
"Can you stay here, keep an eye on the girls? If any of them wakes up and asks where we are, just say I went to the ranch, too, okay?" she told her brother.
"Are you... going to the ranch?" Wyatt had to ask.
For a moment, she became stuck. Several thoughts were piling into her head until she felt like she would stop breathing. Her brain was only three things and they had trouble fitting in the space that held them: Lucas... the girls... Thomas... She needed to get to him... What would she tell them... What would this do to him?
"Maya." Nellie's hands came and pressed at her shoulders, and she blinked, breathed. "What's going on?"
"I can't... I can't be in both places, but I have to, I... He needs to know, I need to tell him, this is..." She paused, breathed again. She had to make a choice. "Some people broke into the ranch, stole horses. Lucas... and Sylvie, they were hurt, they're on their way to the hospital." Wyatt, Nellie, and Gracie were all staring at her, horror struck, but she went on. "Wyatt, you stay here with the girls." He nodded. "Gracie, take the car, go find Thomas and bring him?" She didn't wait, she went for the keys and left. "Nell..." Maya looked to her little sister, still in front of her. There was no question.
"Let's go."
News broke out before the two of them made it to the hospital. Maya started to receive texts and phone calls, but she didn't touch her phone, just let it buzz in her lap. She couldn't be bothered, wouldn't have known what to say. She was more concerned with whether any of this would have reached Thomas before Gracie was able to get to him, or whether it would wake any of her daughters at home and lead them to hear anything before she could talk to them. The only one she answered when the call came was Ella. She sounded like she was losing her mind, having heard what had happened at the ranch, with her father... All Maya could tell her was which hospital to get to.
They arrived right behind Sylvie's husband, Pawel. The young trainer was understandably frantic as he attempted to locate his wife and find out her condition. He was asking a nurse if Sylvie was awake, and if they knew that she was deaf. He was very concerned that she might not have been communicated with, saying how she did not do well in hospitals after several bad experiences growing up. In the midst of all this, he was going on about how he should have been with her, that he was going to pick her up, and he could have stopped this, but whether that was true or not, there was nothing to be done for it now, so all he could do was seek his wife.
"Pawel..." Maya spoke, and he turned to look at her, became instantly relieved.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he told the nurse before looking to Maya again. She looked to the nurse.
"Maya Friar," she introduced herself, wearing her married name today like a shield. "I'm looking for my husband."
There was little to be done or told at first. Sylvie was not in fact conscious at the moment, though she had been briefly earlier and, yes, they knew she was deaf, and they had a nurse nearby who knew ASL. Sylvie was sedated now, so Pawel could go and sit with her, and they would come to tell him more. As for Lucas...
"Where is he?"
She looked up from where she'd been sitting, trying to keep it together, feeling like she was not in her own body, only floating above. But there was Thomas, and Gracie right behind him, and Joe and Patty behind her, so she stood.
"Surgery," Maya told him and the others. Something about him being here, Lucas' father, the one other person around just now who could come close to feeling what she was feeling in that moment and in some ways surpass her, too, made the constant tremor that had existed deep underneath her surface since Cristina's call feel as though it was rising to the top, like she was forgetting how to be brave. She felt the first sting of tears, her fear personified. "They don't seem to be afraid for his life, but they won't say anything for certain, and beyond that, they don't know how he'll be after, it's too soon…"
Sometimes, even now, nearly two and a half years later, she would get flashes of her time in this hospital, after Aubrey was born. She didn't talk about it much if at all, but there would be instances where she was sure that some part of her remembered being unconscious, in all that time, that she might have just… left her body or something. Maybe she was just on the edge of consciousness and she'd retained memories of what she'd heard. Whatever it was, she was thinking about it now, thinking about it a lot. She thought about that time, when Lucas had sat by her, feeling a lot of what she was feeling today, and now here she was… and Thomas… He'd just lost his wife, not one year ago. He was only just starting to lift himself up again. If he lost his son, too…
"Come here," Thomas held out his arms, and she moved to embrace him and be embraced by him, exchanging comfort for comfort, reassurance…
It would be a long night, none of them feeling the slightest touch of sleep on them. Maya, Thomas, Joe, Patty, Nellie and Gracie, Pawel, too, and Sylvie's parents in time… Ella and Taylor would join them, receiving no more updates than the rest of them had done. Just being near her mother though, Ella felt some of her restlessness retreat. Maya wished she could experience that. The closest she got to it was when her own parents came along. Both Katy and Shawn looked like they'd had exactly one thought in mind since they'd caught word of what had happened, and it was to join their eldest.
"What am I supposed to tell them?" Maya asked her mother and father. "They're going to wake up in the morning and we won't be there…" she shook her head, crying.
"We'll get there when we get there," Katy promised, cupping her baby girl's face like she might have been a child all over again. Maybe she wasn't, but oh how small she felt, waiting to hear that the love of her life would be alright.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
